Google definitely biased…

[Chris via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 12 August 2014 at 11:09:37 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> On Tuesday, 12 August 2014 at 09:57:28 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> On Monday, 11 August 2014 at 20:31:55 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>>> Am 11.08.2014 19:40, schrieb ketmar via Digitalmars-d:
>>>> On Mon, 11 Aug 2014 16:23:19 +0100
>>>> Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d 
>>>> <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Google definitely try to push Go :-)
>>>> so you mean that Go can't walk on it's own and needs to be 
>>>> constantly
>>>> pushed by Google so other people will think that it's alive? 
>>>> heh.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, just look to the previous incarnations of Go (Alef, 
>>> Limbo, Oberon 2).
>>>
>>> What is actually happening is the Rails, NodeJS hipsters now 
>>> found a new toy, just because it has the Google stamp on it.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Paulo
>>
>> Try duckduckgo.com. I typed "dlang vs golang". Then do the 
>> same in google. The results are worlds apart!
>>
>> What happens, if one day Google says that they will abandon 
>> Go, cos it didn't bring the desired results? Just like 
>> companies tend to abandon languages and frameworks at random. 
>> Remember Google translate? Java Swing is to be replaced by 
>> JavaFX. Now Objective-C is becoming obsolete. There are loads 
>> of examples. People flock to technologies backed by big 
>> companies, because they think it's safer to do so. But again 
>> and again, companies just drop technologies as they see fit. 
>> Open source has been more reliable. Most frameworks still 
>> exist (think of all the Linux stuff).
>
> I can think of very few successful programming languages in the 
> market without corporate backing.
>
> Even standard ECMA/ANSI/ISO ones, where at a given point in 
> time, corporate languages.
>
> --
> Paulo

But they didn't remain proprietary languages, they were made 
publicly available and standardized, kind of "open sourced", to 
ensure they'd survive. The whole world could use them regardless 
of the OS or hardware in question. I doubt that Swift for example 
will be successful on a larger scale, as long as it's bound to 
Apple devices only.

My point was that it's a common misconception to think that 
corporate backing (or ownership) will guarantee a) a _good_ 
language and b) continuity. Apple made Objective-C popular, but 
is now dropping it. There ain't no guarantee, even if a language 
is backed by a big corporation.